[Csmatters] Fwd: Welcome to CSProviders!

[Dianne O'Grady-Cunniff]

At SIGCSE this year a few of us from the Code.org, Mobile CSP, and UTeach
teams ended up chatting a fair amount about our ideas, successes, and
challenges as CS curriculum and PD providers and quickly recognized our
shared desire to continue those conversations throughout the year. From
reaching out to your teams we gather you share our feelings, and we’re
hoping some of the ideas below will help us all stay in touch and come up
with new ways to collaborate and learn from one another.

We hope you’ll join our Slack team, join us at CSTA this summer, and
propose your own ideas for ways we can continue to grow together and
collectively support CS classrooms. Read the ideas below, let us know if
you have any questions, and we’ll look forward to you all helping us build
this community.

Looking forward to chatting soon!

Your fellow CSProviders

Slack Group: Please take a moment to join the CSProviders Slack team. You
should have separately received an email inviting you. Here are a few ways
to get started.


   -

   New to Slack? This quick video
   <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RJZMSsH7-g> also gives a brief
   overview of what Slack is.



   -

   Fill Out Your Profile: Check out this helpful guide
   <https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/218080037-Getting-started-for-new-members>
   that explains how to set up your account.



   -

   Say “hi” in the #general channel: By default everyone is added to this
   channel so it's a great place to say hi and let everyone know you've joined
   the team. We recommend sharing at least
   -

      Your name
      -

      Your role
      -

      Where you are located in the country
      -

      One fun fact/interest/hobby that has nothing to do with education,
      computer science, or is otherwise remotely related to your professional
      background.



   -

   Respecting Time: Slack has a way of demanding attention and we're all
   busy. Even though Slack is good at quick chats, many times you may need to
   wait hours/days for a response and that's OK. Expecting responses outside
   normal business hours also is unreasonable. Please try to avoid explicitly
   or implicitly using this group in a way that makes people feel pressure to
   constantly be available.



   -

   A Dedicated Place for Curriculum and PD Developers: The vision for this
   Slack team is that it’s a focused place for CS curriculum and PD developers
   to talk. Short term we'd like to keep membership to people whose daily job
   is developing the content of your CS Principles curriculum and PD. This
   means people who dive deep on the purple book, answer teacher questions
   about the PTs, and design lesson plans. The challenges of our day-to-day
   jobs are unique and right now it doesn’t feel like there’s a dedicated
   place for us all to talk, share, and develop as professionals.

   Long term vision is to add more people into the mix. People developing
   CS curriculum and PD for different grades and courses, teams developing
   tools for learning CS, CS education researchers, and others all face
   similar challenges. The name CSProviders is intentionally broad to
   accommodate that growth and Slack’s channel system makes it well-suited for
   eventually supporting many kinds of discussions.

   Right now there's still some members of the CSP community we're hoping
   to add in. If there are people, on your team or otherwise, who you think
   fit the description above but have not been invited please let us know.
   We'd love to add them!


CSTA Providers Event: We’ve floated the idea of a CS Providers event at
CSTA this summer and have only heard positive feedback. After a couple
conversations with the folks at CSTA the most promising time slot is
looking to be the morning of Saturday, July 7th. This isn’t locked but
we’re sharing this plan early since this time would require you to arrive
Friday evening which may affect your travel plans. We’ll follow up as soon
as we have more details.

Regardless of timing we’re designing this event to be a focused and
collaborative work time designed around the biggest needs we see in our
work. It would be an opportunity to share and hone practices, discuss
challenges we encounter as providers, or even invite guest speakers focused
specifically on the needs of CS curriculum / PD developers. The agenda is
still in development, but we wanted to make sure you were expecting a
focused and scheduled meeting and not just a happy hour. That said, we
should probably do a happy hour too!

Your Ideas: Right now the ideas above come largely from a few of us
chatting over lunch or sharing a few emails about ways we could
constructively collaborate. If you have your own thoughts about ways we
could work together please share those too!






-- 
Dianne O'Grady-Cunniff
Acting Director, Maryland Center for Computing Education
CS Matters in Maryland
VP Maryland Computer Science Teachers' Association
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